Regular readers of our blogs may have noticed a slight penchant for using hedgerow plants within a gardened context – and, they’d be right! Such understated and familiar rural plants offer a wonderful counterpoint to a more structured geometric plan. There is also a similarity to the Japanese philosophy of ‘elevating the ordinary’ here, plus a touch of nostalgia for...
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Garden designers don’t work in isolation. Our points of reference are not purely landscape orientated – if they were, our output might become rather inward looking. We are constantly open to cross-pollination and influenced by all sorts of phenomena be they environmental, aesthetic, architectural, nostalgic, political, pragmatic, poetic, musical or literary. I’m particularly inspired by the visual arts.
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I'm passionate about foxgloves, in the right location they naturalise readily, they are easy to cultivate, the resulting varieties are rich in colour, stature and texture – I like the sophisticated rusty brown shades. These elegant plants have history, beauty, variety, a suspicion of danger and, being very attractive to bumblebees, serve a practical environmental purpose – what is not...
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A good and important question, and whilst I’m probably on a hiding to nothing in trying to define a house style – since there are so many variables and one is never standing still – it is an interesting exercise none-the-less. Here goes!
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I fell in love with cow parsley as a boy. I knew it as a common weed and, running amok in our garden woodland, it was considered anything but precious. My brother and I would cut linking pathways through it – an early exploration into garden design? We used hazel sticks as machetes to feel like Amazonian explorers, or bare-chested,...
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My first visit to RHS Chelsea Flower Show was as a boy being dragged, kicking and screaming, by my mum. I thought it would be full of the “paisley-skirted ladies who lunch” brigade. Turns out I enjoyed it in all its diversity, the wacky and bizarre end of things, of course! But I was also struck by the elegant, contemporary...
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Our practice has been involved in specifying a number of ‘green roofs’ over recent years, usually sedum due to roof load-bearing constraints. However, our most recent and enjoyable roof project has been when we designed our eco-house in Oxford. Planning restrictions meant that the entire kitchen would have a flat roof with a large skylight as would the garden office,...
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The discussion of formal vs informal, of humanised landscape vs nature untrammelled can be a hotly debated topic in the world of garden design. A wide variety of garden styles and tastes is the spice of life, but to suggest any designer can ‘recreate nature’ is, in our opinion, a non-starter.
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There are probably few things more exciting (in the world of garden design) than the arrival to site of mature trees ready for planting. They add a structure, maturity and instant three-dimensionality to a scheme that otherwise may take 5 -15 years to reach its design intent.
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